How Pitchapalooza Led to a Book Deal

January 23, 2013 at 10:14 pm (Books, transgressive fiction, Writing)
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Pitchapalooza is a strange and unique event. Hosted by The Book Doctors, it offers the participants the opportunity for a one minute pitch. No more, no less, than one minute. After you have made your pitch, you are critiqued on it with the aim to help you make your pitch better. The winner gets a future meeting with an agent or publisher or editor uniquely qualified to assist.

You never know what it will lead to. This is my story.

SPOILER ALERT: I did NOT win.

It was at the KWA Scene Conference in 2012 that I participated. On this blog, I debated which of two pieces to pitch: a traditional neo-noir hardboiled mystery or an experimental piece of Transgressive fiction. I chose the latter. It was unique enough to stand out even though it might not be the most commercial piece to pitch.

I had looked up Pitchapalooza on YouTube and saw several examples. I wrote and re-wrote my pitch. I practiced. At the Friday night session, the twenty entrants were randomly drawn. I was confident going in. But as the participants came and went, I waited. And waited. And waited. Nerves were starting to settle in.

And then I was called. And, to be honest, I nailed it. I hit it out of the park. Pick your own analogy. But I did what I was supposed to do. I was ready for that cash bar.

At the end of the session, the five panelists excused themselves for a review/vote/consultation. They came back a short time later to announce that they had a winner AND an honorable mention. I knew from my research that was unheard of. They did not usually have Honorable Mentions. I was announced as that rare honoree. Initially I was disappointed but having been mentioned at all, to have been considered, WAS a victory.

One of the panelists was Dan Case of AWOC.COM Publishing who was quite taken with my pitch, my story, and me. I had a one-on-one session with him on Saturday as well as one with Arielle Eckstut, one of the Book Doctors.

Flash forward two months to the OWFI Conference. One of the sessions was on the Elevator Pitch. Again, my Transgressive work, having recently been perfected, was blurted out in a one sentence pitch. More applause and appreciation.

I run into Dan Case. He remembers me. He still wants to see what I’ve got up my sleeve. I send him both pieces that I pitched back at the KWA Scene Conference. We can flash forward some more. Because Dan Case decides to publish the neo-noir hardboiled mystery, “Swan Song”, currently available on Amazon Kindle and Paperback, Barnes and Noble Nook and Paperback, and Kobo e-books.

It’s really mind-boggling, amazing, fascinating, and fun, all at the same time. I keep thinking that Raymond Chandler published his first novel, “The Big Sleep”, when he was 51. I beat him by six months.

It’s only a start. I know that. I don’t know where it actually goes from here. But it all really started because of a crazy event called Pitchapalooza.

12 Comments

I Write Transgressive Fiction; Does That Make Me a Bad Guy?

August 14, 2012 at 9:48 pm (Personal, transgressive fiction, Writing)
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I got a Tweet from David Henry Sterry, one half of The Book Doctors. I had met him and his wife, Arielle Eckstut, at the KWA Scene Conference in March of this year while competing in Pitchapalooza. I pitched my dark comic Transgressive novel Weekend Getaways, or Adventures in Contract Killing and was well received.

The Tweet from David was “what exactly is transgressive fiction?” I responded “Main characters who feel confined by the norms of society. Think Fight Club & American Psycho. (was this a test?)” He came back with “not a test. just curious. is curious george transgressive character? cat in the hat? certainly max from wild things, right? ” Interesting. I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective. I clarified: “Got to add drugs, sex, violence and other taboo subjects into the mix. For the characters, THAT’S normal.” Sometimes the Socratic method does work best.

For my own interests, I looked researched on Wikipedia and found this definition by LA Times literary critic, Michael Silverblatt:

“A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.”

I looked back at my novel and the other collection I put together, Unemployed and Dangerous: A Trilogy of Transgressive Novellas. Was my work really like this? It was true that I explored very dark themes. The approach was offbeat, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, somewhat lyrical. There was an off-handedness to the extreme behavior, as though it were all just normal.

I have worked in customer service or retail for the better part of thirty years. I am certain that my life experience has informed my writing. I have always enjoyed film noir from the 40′s and 50′s, especially with the deep and dark psychological undertones. There is more than just crime in good crime fiction.

I had to go very deep within myself for that collection of novellas, scaring me at times and my wife just enough, before we both realized that I was lowering myself into a well but also pulling myself back up. And yet I know it’s there.

So, I conclude that I am NOT a bad guy but one who recognizes the possibility of badness, madness, degradation, and despair. Just as it is within all of us. And it is daring and scary to dive into those waters for the sake of a piece of writing and it is a dangerous journey to come back to stable ground. It creates an understanding of duality. It forces self-examination, which is necessary on both a personal and artistic level. It broadens the scope of character and literary skill.

I choose to go there knowing that I have the strength of will and the love of my wife to get back. I would not be satisfied any other way.

6 Comments

I might switch the pitch!

February 9, 2012 at 9:10 pm (transgressive fiction, Writing)
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First of all, thank you to all who commented and provided feedback when I asked “Which Pitch to Pitch?” The overwhelming majority of those comments were to pitch the dark comic Transgressive fiction piece, the one that is probably “unpublishable.”

It appears my passion for this piece emerged while discussing my options. Rather than appearing equal to both, a preference inadvertently showed through.

That’ all right, though, because I was leaning toward it anyway. So, done, right? Hold that thought.

I wanted to have two finished pieces available for this writing conference, didn’t want to put all my literary eggs in one basket, so to speak. I was going to bring both. Weekend Getaways was ostensibly finished, just some cosmetic touches to make the interior with its strange fonts and line spacing stand out and be more appealing. Swansong needed a final edit, some tightening to keep it on track for being a face-paced hard-boiled crime fiction.

As I’m working on Swansong, I’m realizing that I’m really really enjoying it. It started out as a NaNoWriMo piece but had long since passed out of that phase and became defined and developed and, well, tight.

I love both of these children equally. They are stylistically different, deal with different themes, have a somewhat different voice, and show drastically different influences.

Yes, I’m bringing both to the writing conference. But I may make a switch on which pitch to pitch.

7 Comments

Hidden Treasures

June 23, 2011 at 8:41 pm (transgressive fiction, Writing)
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I talk to other writers and read other writer’s blogs about writing and revision/editing. Everyone seems to say that writing your first draft is the easy part and that editing is where the real work starts. I do not disagree. My police procedural, The .9 mm Solution, is being completely restructured while my dark comic Transgressive fiction, Weekend Getaways, or Adventures in Contract Killing, is getting expanded into even weirder extremes.

It is tedious and detailed work. It requires an almost re-thinking of the project, attempting to separate yourself from the original impulse that caused you to start writing the piece while at the same time not lose the spark of that impulse. Frustration can lead to satisfaction.

What I am finding as I delve into each of these disparate pieces is that there are hidden treasures, sections of description, turns of phrase, foreshadowing, interesting characters or locations. I am finding aspects of my writing that were not there five years ago, much less in my formative years. Experience in life and practice of craft do yield positive results.

Yes, the actual work of editing and revision is still fraught with fright and requires the ultimate in patience and concentration. But if we look in closer, avoid for a moment “The Bigger Picture”, those hidden treasures are our rewards and the signposts toward the completion of our work.

4 Comments

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